How did ESA's gamma ray-spotting 'scope make it to 20? They totally overdid it
This week, the European Space Agency's International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory spacecraft celebrated the 20th anniversary of its launch – although it was only meant to last five years.
At least once I think we rotated the wrong way, but with the help of a couple of Excel spreadsheets, and three teams working the problem, we got there"Nobody considered it would live more than five years," Integral's former mission manager, Peter Kretschmar told."When we reached 10 years, we thought it was super.
Southworth compared himself to a taxi driver, even though he's the highest technical authority on the mission nowadays and has been with the program for 24 years."Scientists tell me where to go and when," he said. This is because when it was developed, reliable onboard recording telemetry was not available. With no mass memory storage devices, everything was in real time, meaning constant connection to the ground station was required 24 hours a day.
Southworth said the orbit led to the loss of six to eight hours of observation time per 64-hour revolution, a situation that would be completely unnecessary with today's technology.
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